Choose your own adventure – it depends.

Choose your Own Adventure  Maybe you are of a mind to think that this is a good learning opportunity for Johnny.  He experiences a “moderate” amount of stress and is learning how to be tough and self sufficient- something we value in American children. And that could be what is happening – but it depends on what happens next and there are a number of important possibilities.

    Maybe his teacher realizes Johnny hasn’t had much experience with other kids – a new Covid norm.  She appreciates that he may not yet know about sharing – its a sophisticated skill for any three yr old but appropriately it is a newly developing one for that executive function part of the brain.  To share, Johnny must have learned to control his impulses, to wait, and to trust that he will get his turn soon.  His teacher might sit with Johnny and walk through a sharing episode with getting a car to play with, from start to finish,  so that he learns how this sharing thing works.  In this scenario Johnny  will also learn that his teacher will help him – so he learns to trust (and listen to) her.  

    Or maybe Johnny’s teacher has so many children in her classroom that she doesn’t notice or she doesnt think its important to assist Johnny with this skill. After all, some kids in here know how to share – whats the matter with this new kid – grabbing, entitled, aggressive?  Or maybe she thinks he will figure it out himself – which could happen, if he has a temperament that can be patient, persistent and/or he is not too hungry or tired to switch on some executive thinking.  But what if he is a young three and doesn’t have the capacity to wait quite yet ?  Maybe the stress of being in this new place, alone, makes sharing impossible today because he is on his last (limbic) nerve.  

    Whichever teacher response he gets can set the trajectory for both his and the teacher’s expectations and we know how that ends -You get what you expect to get.   And all of this conjecture does not take into account the temperament, development or issues of the other child(ren).  If Johnny has inadvertently provoked someone’s tantrum – who is to blame?  Who will the teacher be mad at?

    Of course we have just described – at most 20 minutes – of a child care event in which an individual child’s development is evident.  (Hint:  they all are).   Now we are about to encounter the next predictably contentious event of the day: Clean Up Time.  Johnny: “What?????”

Johnny  may have been asked to put toys away at home (maybe not) but likely there haven’t been so many WRONG places to put things.  Nor has it been so loud and confusing with everyone singing some crazy song and moving quickly.  If Johnny had been getting used to things, now his limbic system switches right back on.

Johnny’s bumpy first day can be…okay.  If it goes very badly Johnny’s behavior will let us know – tears, hitting, defiance, withdrawal.  Will he want to come back tomorrow?  It depends.  

Oh, and does Johnny speak the same language as his teacher?